When I kicked off last year's Top 10 list with a long list of eagerly
awaited films by name directors, I should have been more careful what I
wished for. 1999 was not the best year in which to be an auteurist. Some
of my favorite directors made films so bad they were depressing - although
I seem to be the only person in the U.S. who dislikes Mike Leigh's TOPSY-TURVY
and Claire Denis' BEAU TRAVAIL - and even many of the auteur films that
I liked - Jane Campion's HOLY SMOKE, Robert Altman's COOKIE'S FORTUNE,
Pedro Almodovar's ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, the
Dardenne brothers' ROSETTA, Werner Herzog's MY BEST FIEND, Errol Morris'
MR. DEATH, Steven Soderbergh's THE LIMEY, Emir Kusturica's BLACK CAT, WHITE
CAT - amounted to little more than minor or highly flawed pleasures.

Meanwhile, the Amerindie sector, which seemed practically moribund just
two years ago, offered up strong debuts from Spike Jonze (and screenwriter
Charlie Kaufman), Kimberly Peirce, the BLAIR WITCH collective and documentarian
Barbara Sonneborn. Although I'm far from convinced that this was the best
year for American cinema since 1939, Hollywood produced a steady stream
of uneven but relatively adventurous films in compensation for the Miramax-led
co-option of "independent film." There were some promising debuts
overseas as well: French director Philippe Grandieux's fascinating avant-garde
slasher movie SOMBRE would have made my Top 10 list if not for its repulsive
misogyny, while Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke's XIAO WU suggested that
his country's cinema may find its way back to life after the Fifth Generation's
midlife crisis. And the massive turnouts drawn by MOMA's Robert Bresson
retrospective and the Walter Reade's Hou Hsaio-hsien retrospective proved
that cinephilia is far from dead in New York.

1999 was certainly a more satisfying year than 1998, but I felt more
and more like a contrarian as the year wore on. God only knows why so many
critics got excited by the generic youth-oriented French naturalism of
Erick Zonca's THE DREAM LIFE OF ANGELS. I've seen a dozen better examples
of this aesthetic, and Zonca's short ALONE proves that even he can do it
better. Although more tolerable than Luc Besson, Tom Tykwer's RUN LOLA
RUN epitomized the MTV aesthetic of the cinema du look at its emptiest
and most painfully hip; as this kind of stuff goes, I much prefer Douglas
Liman's slightly less cartoonish GO.

I've got nothing against Pedro Almodovar's ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER itself,
but I'm disturbed by the amount of hype it generated at Cannes, especially
now that I've had a chance to see some of its competition. While a pretty
good film, it's no better than Almodovar's THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET and
(widely ignored) LIVE FLESH, not to mention Cannes challengers like ROSETTA
and Manoel de Oliveira's THE LETTER. Depressingly, its high comfort level
and obvious American influences played into the hands of VARIETY critic
Todd McCarthy's quest to wipe out all cinema that doesn't play by Hollywood's
rules. This level of accessibility doesn't make it any better or worse
than ROSETTA or THE LETTER, of course, but it's more essential than ever
to stress the value of all kinds of world cinema, not just the kind
that excites McCarthy and Harvey Weinstein.

Given the love-it-or-hate-it reactions provoked by Catherine Breillat's
ROMANCE, it's both overrated and underrated. While I fall somewhere
in between the two extremes, I suspect that the feminist critics who make
up most of the "love-it" camp are reacting largely to the novelty
of a female director making such a sexually explicit film. In comparison
to her other work, it shows a refreshing sense of humor and relative optimism,
yet her characters' brain-dead "philosophical" reveries made
it impossible for me to take their sexual journeys as seriously as Breillat
does. When Charles Taylor suggests that Americans who've derided its talkiness
and pretensions are reacting out of an unconscious Puritanical rejection,
he'd have a much better case if Breillat were as talented a writer as Georges
Bataille or Pauline Réage.

With THE INSIDER, Michael Mann once again showed that he can inflate
an interesting subject and great cast to an unbearable level of pomposity.
Just as tormented tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand got screwed in real
life, THE INSIDER cheats him (and Russell Crowe) when it turns the spotlight
away from him to focus on Al Pacino's saintly newsman and Christopher Plummer's
Mike Wallace impersonation. The preachy Middle Americana of David Lynch's
THE STRAIGHT STORY left me pretty cold, but at least it proves that he
can still do something other than pander to a cult audience expecting self-conscious
weirdness.

However, the most overrated American film of the year was Sam Mendes'
AMERICAN BEAUTY, this year's equivalent of BOOGIE NIGHTS and THE ICE STORM:
a worthwhile but highly flawed work that got hailed as a masterpiece often
enough to make my stomach churn. I liked it enough to give it 3 stars initially
(mostly because of the final half hour), yet it seemed flimsier the more
I thought about, and at this point, it strikes me as little more than an
extremely well-acted MARRIED WITH CHILDREN episode. In the context of network
TV, its tepid jabs at suburban alienation, materialism, homophobia and
gun culture might look daring, yet it pales next to FIGHT CLUB's Ikea smackdown
and SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT's indictment of war fever, much
less BLUE VELVET or SAFE. (After nearly 20 years of the War on Drugs, its
decidedly pro-marijuana attitude may be its most genuinely provocative
quality.) Although somewhat less mean-spirited than Todd Solondz (a visible
source of inspiration, along with Lynch, Atom Egoyan and SEX, LIES AND
VIDEOTAPE), screenwriter Alan Ball still can't help ridiculing middle-aged
female sexuality, even if he eventually extends a generous hand to most
of his other characters. And someone really should have told him the audience
doesn't need to be told how fucking poetic that image of the floating bag
is.

One note: Dariush Mehrjjui's LEILA, which was released commercially
this year after playing at several 1998 New York festivals, was #9 on last
year's Top 10 list.

10. MAGNOLIA (Paul Thomas Anderson)

One film later, Paul Thomas Anderson has finally managed to live up
to BOOGIE NIGHTS' reviews! A deliberate indulgence in emotional excess,
MAGNOLIA aims for nothing less than a reinvention of the American melodrama
and brings enough ambition, craft and sincerity to pull it off. Hampered
by a needlessly lengthy intro and an overload of subplots, it's by far
the most flawed film on this list, but Anderson's structure, based around
as much around emotional links between scenes as a conventional narrative
progression, allows for plenty of affecting moments, including a sublime
singalong. Given MAGNOLIA's obvious debt to SHORT CUTS (although it thankfully
drops Altman's mean streak), Anderson may not have found his own voice
yet, but heÕs making steady progress. If he can finally crawl out
from the influence of his masters and learn more about real life, I think
he may become a great director.

9. BESIEGED (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy)

An exciting comeback from a director I stopped taking seriously a decade
ago, BESIEGED transcends a bad screenplay and atypically weak David Thewlis
performance largely because Bertolucci has reinvented his mise-en-scéne.
Turning away from the Tradition of Quality sheen Vittorio Storaro often
brought to his work, he relies here instead on aggressive camera movement
and editing to express the emotions his characters can't talk about directly.
Although BESIEGED was accused of racism by several critics, its inter-racial
love story is hardly a romanticized Hallmark fantasy, given the deliberate
creepiness and colonial overtones of the behavior of its "hero"
and bittersweet, if not downright unhappy, conclusion.

8. SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT (Trey Parker)

After a few years of inspired but increasingly uneven SOUTH PARK episodes,
I wasn't sure what to expect from the TV program's feature-length debut,
apart from endless profanity. Of course, SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER &
UNCUT delivers plenty of that (and quite creatively, too), but it also
offered a biting anti-war/anti-censorship satire, which seemed especially
a propos in the wake of Columbine and Kosovo, and 14 very catchy
songs. ("Uncle Fucka" is my favorite.) Without deferring to "political
correctness" in the slightest, Parker and co-creator Matt Stone aimed
their venom at the right targets; surprisingly, their gay Satan is as fully
realized and sympathetic as any other character, rather than a cheap homophobic
gag. My inner 12-year-old hasn't had this much fun at the movies in years,
and my outer 27-year-old was pretty satisfied too.

7. XIAO WU (Jia Zhang Ke, China)

Since the early 90s RAISE THE RED LANTERN/FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE heyday,
mainland Chinese cinema, torn by the twin pressures of censorship and Western
audiences' demands, has both declined and fallen out of fashion to the
point where Zhang Yimou's next-to-last film, KEEP COOL, still hasn't been
released in the U.S. However, the dry wit and passive "hero"
- a shy, seemingly depressed pickpocket who spends his days wandering around
a provincial city killing time watching his former friends make money -
of XIAO WU share more with Elia Suleiman's CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE
than any other Chinese film I've seen. Rather than mourn the Cultural Revolution
for the 117th time, XIAO WU, which played in March at MOMA's NEW DIRECTORS/NEW
FILMS, presents a crystal-clear vision of everyday life in an unglamorous
China of beepers, karaoke clubs and grey-market capitalism, with a great
deal more to say about globalization than any Western film I've seen in
years.

6. THE CLASS TRIP (Claude Miller, France)

Avant la lettre, Claude Miller beat the Gothic hysteria of Neil
JordanÕs IN DREAMS to the punch. A portrait of a boy helplessly
caught in a private world of hallucinatory Freudian symbols (rollercoasters,
hooks, detached body parts, mysterious bags) and ill at ease in his own
mind and body , it evokes a hellish childhood so vividly one can taste
the bile. Even if the film falters somewhat after revealing the rationale
behind its tormented visions, Miller's best moments are worthy of David
Cronenberg or prime Dario Argento. Although hardly an arcane art film,
it still hasn't found an American distributor after its March appearance
at the Walter Reade's annual series of new French films.

5. BOYS DON'T CRY (Kimberly Peirce)

First-time filmmaker Peirce more than does justice to the real-life
tragedy of Brandon Teena, treating her story, which has already inspired
one documentary, in a remarkably assured style somewhere between social
realism and Lynchian surrealism. Although the film has usually been perceived
as a conventional docudrama, her decision to shoot most of the film at
night contributes to a subtly off-kilter quality, and the opening credits
and final scene could have come straight from LOST HIGHWAY. However, its
heart lies in the accomplished performances, especially Chloe Sevigny's
lacerating turn as Teena's lover.

4. KHROUSTALIOV, MY CAR! (Alexei German, Russia)

Making a chaotic, confusing film about a chaotic, confusing time isn't
always such a good idea, but German brings the difficult task off with
energy and style to burn. (German spent eight years between the completion
of his 1982 MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN, which was banned for several years
by the Russian government, and the beginning of production of KHROUSTALIOV,
which took another seven years to finish, and the pent-up rage produced
by this wait is quite evident in the finished product.) Full of pitch-black
humor, bodily fluids and nerve-rattling tension, it ranks alongside post-Communist
Eastern European landmarks like Lucian Pintilie's THE OAK, Emir Kusturica's
UNDERGROUND and Béla Tarr's SATANTANGO. As difficult as German's
narrative is to follow, his style fits the menace of Stalinism's final
gasp - a frantic few days in which the threat of deportation or worse lurks
around every corner - like a glove. KHROUSTALIOV made its New York debut
at the 1998 New York Film Festival, where I missed it at the time, and
reappeared last December at 2 festivals of recent films from the former
USSR.

3a. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (Daniel Myrick/Eduardo Sanchez
et al.)

3b. OUTER SPACE (Peter Tcherkassky, Austria)

When I saw THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT on opening day, I never expected
it to have a shot at a 140 million dollar gross, much less provoke the
kind of widespread anger it subsequently generated. Six months later, I'm
most impressed by the way it brings together several strands of North American
independent cinema: the B-movies of Val Lewton and the later examples of
regional horror directors like George Romero and Tobe Hooper, the 60s work
of Shirley Clarke and John Cassavetes, and Atom Egoyan's reflexivity and
fascination with video technology. (As a cautionary tale about video, it
certainly trumps Michael Haneke's self-righteous tirades.) The horror of
BWP ultimately has as much to do with the kind of identity breakdowns that
fascinated Clarke and Cassavetes as with the Blair Witch's supernatural
powers. One hopes its massive commercial success - and that of THE SIXTH
SENSE, which is about as elegant as New Age claptrap gets - might lead
to a resurgence of the serious American horror movie but Artisan's tidal
wave of hype generated so much noise that it's hard to tell what impact
the film really had. One need only read the smug CINEASTE editorial which
condemned critics who think it (and/or EYES WIDE SHUT) a masterpiece or
trash as clueless victims of P.R. - without offering substantial analysis
of either film or a response to the intelligent defenses of BWP by Godfrey
Cheshire, Michael Atkinson and J. Hoberman - to see how hard it is these
days to build bridges between the arthouse and multiplex.

A 14-minute short shown at the New York Film Festival's "Views
From The Avant-Garde" sidebar, OUTER SPACE takes footage from a 70s
woman-in-jeopardy thriller starring Barbara Hershey and fragments it into
a cubist dynamo, turning the implicit threat of violence into an assault
on film form and our ability to comprehend the evidence in front of our
eyes and ears. Despite its brevity, this terrifying miniature ranks as
one of the (few) great horror films of the 90s, and in a more open-minded
world, it might have found an audience alongside SE7EN - which owes a massive
debt to avant-garde cinema - or BWP.

Even (or especially) in the age of globalization, real news sometimes
arrives slowly. Despite receiving mountains of critical acclaim and influencing
filmmakers all over the world, this 1991 masterpiece was never released
in the U.S. until 1999. For once, this isn't entirely the fault of cowardly
distributors: its French producers reportedly demanded a huge sum of money
at first for the American rights. However, once Miramax acquired the film,
they kept it on the shelf for a year before giving it a slow, cursory release.
Apart from Wong Kar-wai's CHUNG KING EXPRESS and FALLEN ANGELS, no 90s
film evoked the youthful romanticism of the French New Wave as passionately
as Carax. This was a good year for catching up: in addition to its Hou
Hsaio-hsien series, WinStar also released Takeshi Kitano's first two films
theatrically and on video, while the Screening Room and Zeitgeist Films
gave another aging masterpiece, Abbas Kiarostami's 1990 CLOSE-UP, a week-long
run.

1.BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (Spike Jonze)

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is simultaneously 1)a hilarious surrealist comedy,
the closest American equivalent I've ever seen to Jacques Rivette's CELINE
& JULIE GO BOATING; 2)a moving love story and 3)a meditation on practically
everything under the sun: the seduction of fame, the social construction
of gender and sexuality, the absurdity of work, and the promises and perils
of "escapist" technologies like virtual reality (and, by extension,
the cinema). As much as I enjoyed eXistenZ and THE MATRIX, neither film
had much new to say about the 1999 topic du jour - a reality growing
more virtual by the day - but MALKOVICH gradually expanded out from an
absurdist gag into a road map of the way we dream now. I can't think of
a better way to greet the next century's threat/promise of the end of cinema
as we know it.